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Articles about politics
Chaudhary Charan Singh (23 December 1902 – 29 May 1987) was an Indian politician, peasant leader, author and an independence activist who briefly served as the prime minister of India from July 1979 to January 1980. [2] [3] Singh was principally known for his land and agricultural reform initiatives, and was Member of Parliament (MP) for Baghpat. During his premiership, he was a member of the Janata Party (Secular). He served as the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh as a member of Bharatiya Kranti Dal. He also briefly served as the deputy prime minister…
Vishwanath Pratap Singh (25 June 1931 – 27 November 2008) was an Indian politician who served as the Prime Minister of India from 1989 to 1990 and the Raja Bahadur of Manda. [8] [9] Some Pakistani historians state that Singh's family originated from a village in the Yaqubi area of District Peshawar (present-day Swabi, Pakistan), and that after the Partition of India in 1947 he moved with his mother to live at his uncle's home. [10] [11] He was educated at Allahabad University and Fergusson College in Pune. [12] In 1969, he joined the Indian National…
Inder Kumar Gujral (4 December 1919 – 30 November 2012) was an Indian diplomat, politician, and independence activist, who served as prime minister of India from April 1997 to March 1998. [2] Born in Punjab, he was influenced by politics as a student, and joined the All India Students Federation and the Communist Party of India. He was imprisoned for taking part in the Quit India movement. After independence, he joined the Indian National Congress party in 1964, and became a Member of Parliament in the Rajya Sabha. He was the Minister of Information and…
Haradanahalli Doddegowda Deve Gowda (pronunciation ⓘ ; born 18 May 1933) [2] is an Indian politician who served as the Prime minister of India for nearly 11 months, from 1996 to 1997, [3] [4] and previously as the Chief minister of Karnataka (1994 – 1996) and a Member of Parliament (MP) in the Lok Sabha. A member of the Janata Dal (Secular), he has been serving as the party's president since 1999 and has been an MP in the Rajya Sabha representing Karnataka since 2020. [5] Born in a family of farmers, Deve Gowda joined the Indian National Congress (INC)…
Pamulaparthi Venkata Narasimha Rao (28 June 1921 – 23 December 2004) was an Indian independence activist, lawyer, [4] and politician from the Indian National Congress who served as the prime minister of India from 1991 to 1996. He was the first person from South India and the second person from a non-Hindi speaking background to be prime minister. He is known for his role in initiating India's economic liberalisation following an economic crisis in 1991, [5] [6] [7] a process that has been sustained and expanded by every successive prime minister of the…
Morarji Ranchhodji Desai (29 February 1896 – 10 April 1995) was an Indian politician and independence activist who served as the prime minister of India between 1977 and 1979 leading the government formed by the Janata Party. During his long career in politics, he held many important posts in government such as the chief minister of Bombay State, the home minister, the finance minister, and the deputy prime minister. Following the death of Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, Desai was a strong contender for the position of Prime Minister, only to be…
Pratibha Devisingh Patil (born 19 December 1934), also known as Pratibha Patil Shekhawat , [1] [2] is an Indian stateswoman and lawyer who served as the president of India from 2007 to 2012. She was the first woman to become the president of India. A member of the Indian National Congress, she also served as the Governor of Rajasthan from 2004 to 2007, and was a member of the Lok Sabha from 1991 to 1996. Early life Patil was born on 19 December 1934 in the village of Nadgaon in Jalgaon district, Maharashtra, to a Marathi-speaking family. [3] [4] [5] The…
Ram Nath Kovind (Hindi: Rām Nāth Kovind , pronounced [ɾɑm nɑt̪ʰ koʋɪnd̪] ⓘ ; born 1 October 1945) is an Indian politician and lawyer who served as the president of India from 2017 to 2022. He is the first person from Uttar Pradesh as well as the first member of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to become the president of India. Prior to his presidency, he served as the Governor of Bihar from 2015 to 2017 and as a Member of Rajya Sabha from Uttar Pradesh for two successive terms. [1] [2] Prior to entering politics, he was a lawyer and he practised in the…
Droupadi Murmu [1] (born Durgi Tudu ; [2] 20 June 1958) is an Indian politician who has served as the president of India since 2022. She won the 2022 presidential election from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). [3] She is the first person belonging to a tribal community and also the second woman, after Pratibha Patil, to hold the office. She is also the youngest person to occupy the post (at 64) and the first president born in independent India. [4] [5] Previously, she served as the governor of Jharkhand from 2015 to 2021, being the longest-serving…
Pranab Mukherjee (Bengali: Praṇaba Kumāra Mukhārjī , pronounced [pɾɔnob kumaɾ mukʰaɾʤi] ; 11 December 1935 – 31 August 2020) was an Indian politician who served as the president of India from 2012 until 2017. He was the first person from West Bengal to hold the office. In a political career spanning five decades, Mukherjee was a senior leader in the Indian National Congress and occupied several top ministerial portfolios in the Government of India. [2] Prior to his election as President, Mukherjee was Finance Minister from 2009 to 2012 also in 1982 to…
Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam (/ˈʌbdʊl kəˈlɑːm/ ⓘ UB-duul kə-LAHM ; 15 October 1931 – 27 July 2015) was an Indian aerospace engineer and science administrator who served as president of India from 2002 to 2007. In 1997, he was awarded India's highest civilian honour, the Bharat Ratna, for his contribution to the scientific research and modernisation of defence technology in India. [2] Born and raised in a Muslim family in Rameswaram, Tamil Nadu, Kalam studied physics and aerospace engineering. He spent the next four decades as a scientist and…
Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar [1] (14 April 1891 – 6 December 1956) was an Indian jurist, economist, social reformer and politician who chaired the committee that drafted the Constitution of India based on the debates of the Constituent Assembly of India and the first draft of Sir Benegal Narsing Rau. [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] Ambedkar served as Law and Justice minister in the first cabinet of Jawaharlal Nehru. He later renounced Hinduism and converted to Buddhism, inspiring the Dalit Buddhist movement. [7] After graduating from Elphinstone College, University of…
Lal Bahadur Shastri [1] (2 October 1904 – 11 January 1966) was an Indian politician and statesman who served as the prime minister of India from 1964 to 1966. He previously served as home minister from 1961 to 1963. Shastri was born to Sharad Prasad Srivastava and Ramdulari Devi in Mughalsarai on 2 October 1904. He studied in East Central Railway Inter college and the Harish Chandra High School, which he left to join the non-cooperation movement. He worked for the betterment of the Harijans at Muzaffarpur and dropped his caste-derived surname of…
Vallabhbhai Patel (31 October 1875 – 15 December 1950), commonly known as Sardar Patel , [1] was a Gandhian Indian independence activist, lawyer and statesman who served as the first Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister of India from 1947 to 1950. He was a senior leader of the Indian National Congress, who played a significant role in the Indian independence movement and India's political integration. [4] In India and elsewhere, he was often called Sardar meaning "chief". He acted as the Home Minister during the political integration of India and the…
Manmohan Singh [1] (26 September 1932 – 26 December 2024) was an Indian economist, bureaucrat, academician and statesman who served as the prime minister of India from 2004 to 2014. He was the fourth longest-serving prime minister after Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, and Narendra Modi. [2] A member of the Indian National Congress, Singh was the first and remains the only Sikh prime minister of India. [3] He was also the first prime minister since Nehru to be re-appointed after completing a full five-year term. [4] [5] Born in Gah in what is today…
Sonia Gandhi (Hindi: [ˈsoːnɪjaː ˈɡaːndʱiː], Italian: [ˈsɔːnja ˈɡandi]; née Maino [ˈmaino]; born 9 December 1946) is an Indian politician. She is the longest-serving president of the Indian National Congress, a big-tent liberal political party, which has governed India for most of its post-independence history. She took over as the party leader in 1998, seven years after the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, her husband and a former Prime Minister of India, and remained in office until 2017 after serving for twenty-two years. [1] She returned to the post as…
Rajiv Ratna Gandhi [2] [1] (20 August 1944 – 21 May 1991) [3] was an Indian aircraft pilot and politician who served as the prime minister of India from 1984 to 1989 for two terms. He took office after the assassination of his mother, then–prime minister Indira Gandhi, to become the youngest Indian prime minister at the age of 40. He served until his defeat at the 1989 election, and then became Leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha, resigning in December 1990, six months before his own assassination. Gandhi was not related to Mahatma Gandhi. Instead, he…
Jawaharlal Nehru [1] (14 November 1889 – 27 May 1964) was an Indian lawyer, anti-colonial nationalist, [8] secular humanist, [9] social democrat, [10] and statesman who was a central figure in India during the middle of the 20th century. Nehru was a principal leader of the Indian nationalist movement in the 1930s and 1940s. Upon India's independence in 1947, he served as the country's first prime minister, holding office for 16 years and 286 days. [11] Nehru promoted parliamentary democracy, secularism, and science and technology during the 1950s,…
Atal Bihari Vajpayee (25 December 1924 – 16 August 2018) was an Indian statesman and a poet who served as prime minister of India, from 1998 to 2004, and previously for two weeks in 1996. [2] [3] He was the first non-Congress prime minister to serve a full term in the office. Vajpayee was one of the co-founders and a senior leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). He was a volunteer and full-time functionary ( pracharak ) [4] of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a right-wing Hindutva paramilitary volunteer organisation. Vajpayee combined…
Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi [1] (née Nehru ; 19 November 1917 – 31 October 1984) [3] was an Indian stateswoman who twice served as the Prime Minister of India from 1966 to 1977 and again from 1980 until her assassination in 1984. She was India's first and only female prime minister, and a central figure in Indian politics as the leader of the Indian National Congress (INC). Gandhi also served as chairperson of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) from 1983 to 1984, becoming the first Indian to hold the position. She was the daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru, the…